Michel, thank you for posting this informative article. I was always struck by the potent symbolism of Rosa Parks, in reality a frail and gentle human being, yet with a fierce determination that became a driving force of the civil rights movement. When I heard of her passing away last evening, I wanted to post an article right away to the forum, but I could not find an obituary of substance. Once again, thank you for posting this, because the article brings out a lot of details about Rosa Parks that I did not know previously.

Thank you, Rosa, for having contributed to make our lives in these United States a much more convenient one. We all owe you an eternal debt of gratitude.

Dunord wrote: [quote]When I read this for some reason I thought about the airport in Port au Prince and the self-important asses that come late and push past everyone to get to the front of the line as if the rest of us are nothing. The Haitians from the US and Canada don't seem to put up with that garbage nearly as much as the Haitians of Haiti. It says something. [/quote]
Dunord ! My apology on behalf of those Haitian jackasses who come late and push past everyone to get to the front of the line as if the rest of you is nothing.
As long as you have your airline ticket and your seat number, the plane couldn't leave you. You will get in, and you will be seated like everybody else.

In Rosa Parks' case, she bought her ticket like everybody else, but because of the color of her skin and the segregation laws, she had to give up her seat, and stood up so a white person could be seated. That's sucks!!!

Than
ks to her, now nobody, black or white has to give up hi/her seat.
Anybody could take a seat anywhere in first class or poulaye.

Michel, I agree that Rosa Parks was the Mother of the CIvil rights Movement.

But, there is a problem. Yes, we can sit in the buses without giving the seat to a White Person. Well, that White person OWNS the Bus Company. This is the shift post the Civil rights movement.

Yes, we came a long way, but not long enough. Segregation still exists and we cannot play dumb any longer.

When I go to Queens where my Mom lives. Who do you think owns the Buildings where thousands of Black People live? Who do you think ride the buses there?

This is the real Apartheid! Things are not the way they were supposed to be.

My Brothers and Sisters, they are playing with our mind like a musical instrument... The White Supremacist Machine let us sit in the Bus which it controls. It controls everything that we do, the Banks, Housing, Jobs etc etc.

What can we do about it? It's ok now, we can sit in the bus. We don't have to let a
White person take our seat. What am I saying, they don't use our Public Transportation that much anyway.

We used to point fingers at South Africa's Apartheid. What is this one called? Our loans are more expensive. Our jobs (if we have one) pay far less. We pay far more for our cars. I know that life is hard, but Harder for a Black person.

Frankly, I don't really care about sitting in Buses. I care more about more Ownerships from our Black Brothers and Sisters. For, I don't want to see the Louisiana image everytime I turn on my TV. Brothers and Sisters waiting for the White Helping Hands who most of them do not care about helping a "Lesser Being" (their views).

Malcom wanted us to own our Companies and be more self-sufficient. That is why we will never have a Malcom X Day...

Rosa Parks was a great Human Being who refused to be treated as Inferior. Paix a son Ame.

We need to do more, we are too dependent on that Racist System which is playing with our psyche.

Dunord wrote:[quote]I personally don't tolerate the ill mannered boujwa. Sometimes I feel like shouting as they walk out of the MIA airport, "Hey Boujwa ! You are now entering the food chain."[/quote]
Don't generalize it Dunord! Those people are not all bourjwa. Some of them are: des parvenus, des « arivices” who despite all their money, don't invest in their education, and the education of their children. Just ignore them!! They are not the future of Haiti! You are!

Leonel wrote:[quote]Yes, we came a long way, but not long enough. Segregation still exists and we cannot play dumb any longer. [/quote]
Leonel my friend! Segregation doesn't exist anymore in America!!! Discrimination Yes! But it's across the board, Black, White, Latino, illegal immigrants etc.

Leonel wrote:[quote]When I go to Queens where my Mom lives. Who do you think owns the Buildings where thousands of B
lack People live? Who do you think ride the buses there? [/quote]
She shouldn't care who owns the building where she lives as long as she is being treated fairly, and with dignity.

Leonel wrote:[quote]My Brothers and Sisters, they are playing with our mind like a musical instrument... The White Supremacist Machine let us sit in the Bus which it controls. It controls everything that we do the Banks, Housing, Jobs etc etc. we are too dependent on that Racist System which is playing with our psyche.[/quote]
Right on my brother! Right on!! Black Power!!! Fight the Power!! Alleluia and amen!!

Leonel please enough of those 60's and 70's Black Panthers, and Muslim craps rally talks! Wake up! You are in 2005!!
For more than 40 years, we haven't had a Martin Luther King, a Rosa Parks, nor a Malcom X. We are having a bunch of black activist charlatans who are thinking about themselves more than anything else. Things have changed my brother!

It's good to
think globally, but it's better to act locally.
Protect and cherish your family and your community, and you will be just fine.

The nation's capital began preparations yesterday for a historic weekend, when civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks will become one of only 30 Americans ever honored with the pomp and ritual of a Capitol Rotunda viewing.

The woman who quietly refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., a half-century ago will be the first woman and the second African American to lie at the same exalted place as presidents and war heroes.

The tribute became official yesterday when the House passed a resolution approved earlier by the Senate, honoring a woman whose courage helped spark the civil rights movement and, eventually, landmark federal legislation.

So, yesterday, the machinery of protocol began its decades-old ritual of remembrance. The Rotunda will be open for public viewing of Parks's coffin from 6:30 p.m. to midnight tomorrow and from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday.

Many expect the vigil to draw crowds of people who remember Parks as a role model and an icon of the civil rights movements.
"I can't imagine a higher honor than this," said Richard Baker, chief Senate historian, who has studied and documented events beneath the great dome for three decades.

Parks transcended the partisanship that has deadlocked Congress on other issues. Within days of her death, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who employed Parks for 20 years in his Detroit office, had moved the resolution through both houses of Congress, with support from both sides of the aisle.

Baker said of Parks: "It's been a long road from that bus seat to the Capitol Rotunda in Washington.
This is a great memorial to the courage of one person."

Buses will become part of the symbolism of the moment. Sixty Parks family members and dignitaries traveling from Montgomery will board three Metro buses draped in black bunting. The procession will be led to the Capitol by a 1957 bus, which will be empty of passengers, said Candace Smith, a Metro spokeswoman.

After memorials in Montgomery tomorrow, the coffin will be flown to the Washington area on a plane provided by Southwest Airlines and commanded by one of the first African American chief pilots for a commercial airline, said John C. White, spokesman for the NAACP.

The entourage and hearse are scheduled to arrive at the Capitol from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport at 5:30 p.m. The coffin will enter the Capitol via the grand East Steps. There will be a tribute including a choir, wreath laying, and prayers, followed by the public viewing.

Mourners will line up at the West Entrance to be proces
sed through the visitor screening center. There will be 12 metal detectors to search for weapons and other prohibited items, including recording devices.

Police will not allow chairs, umbrellas, coolers, sleeping bags, large backpacks or other bulky items. Officials will not allow photography in the Rotunda; they have not yet decided whether to ban cameras. Prohibited items can be checked at the entrance and reclaimed after the viewing, said U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, who will follow the same crowd-control plan used during President Ronald Reagan's viewing last year.

After the viewing Monday, the coffin will be taken to Metropolitan AME Church in downtown Washington for a 1 p.m. memorial service. D.C. police said they will restrict parking and traffic in the area of 15th and M streets NW all day for the service. Afterward, the coffin will be taken to BWI and flown to Detroit, where there will be another vigil and then burial Tuesday.

In the past, the nation has come t
o the Capitol to pay tribute to presidents, senators, generals and unknown soldiers. This is the first time a private citizen renowned for social activism and the first time a woman will be the focus of the ritual.
Mary Francis Berry, a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said scores of people will pay tribute because Parks was a champion of ordinary people. "Here is a person who is in relative obscurity, who made an enormous change," Berry said.

"Sometimes the most unlikely people can make a difference if they are committed to a principle."

Parks is again making history, admirers said. "There has to be a standard for a civilian to be accorded such a high honor," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)

"Rosa Parks has met that standard of extraordinary service to her country. She didn't have a weapon on her. She didn't have an organization behind her. All she had was her conviction."[/b:018
7b960c7]

The tribute, which requires an act of Congress, has taken place 30 times, historians say. The first person so honored was Henry Clay, in 1852. The last person was Reagan, in June of last year. Others were nine presidents, eight members of Congress, an admiral, two generals, two government officials, two Capitol police officers slain at their posts, unknown soldiers and Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the architect who designed Washington, D.C.

"I think it's a very powerful message honoring Ms. Parks and, therefore, so many who did so much for the cause of equality," said Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. "More than that, highlighting Ms. Parks is an opportunity to highlight the tremendous impact that one individual can have, even in moving a nation."

The Rev. Grainger Browning Jr., pastor of Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, said he expects many from his flock to attend the tribute at the Capitol because members of the Parks famil
y were longtime members of the church.

Fred Gray, the Alabama lawyer who represented Parks after she was arrested, said many leaders of the civil rights movement will be scrambling to get to Washington this weekend.

Michel, I am not trying to insult you. But, do you really mean what you said or you are just playing...

I would be surprised if you said otherwise. You are plugged somewhere in DC. They are watching us, therefore, Michou has to watch what he is saying.

I got news for you, my Friend. These people are using you like Chewing gum. Discard after usage. I am pretty sure, you have the privilege to be part of some of their parties like a lot of Republicans Wannabees. Your mind is twisted.

Don't you see anything wrong about Rosa Parks in the same room as Ronald Reagan. It's like putting Mandela or Castro in the same room where GW is. Big contrast.

By the way, Black Panthers were feeding the Poors. What is wrong with that?

Are you serious, or are you suffering from dementia, blindness, or something else?

There are other quotes, I can not entertain the thought of answering. You are a Happy Big Jim! The Masser ain't bad after all. We shouldn't care about all the wealths accumulated on our behalf...

[quote]Leonel please enough of those 60's and 70's Black Panthers, and Muslim craps rally talks! Wake up! You are in 2005!!
For more than 40 years, we haven't had a Martin Luther King, a Rosa Parks, nor a Malcom X. We are having a bunch of black activist charlatans who are thinking about themselves more than anything else. Things have changed my brother!

It's good to think globally, but it's better to act locally.
Protect and cherish your family and your community, and you will be just fine. [/quote][/quote]

The Buck does not stop her. Rosa Parks was an Icon to the the Civil Rights movement. What about the other two women who did the same thing a year earlier???

By the way, Malcom got wiser like everyone does with age and experience. His killing or assassination was not the act of those black fools alone. He had to be killed, for entertaining the thoughts of Black people having their own businesses. This was more powerful than anything else in the Civil Rights era.

We consume more sneakers or other goods. But yet, the media is off-limit. A group of Black men/women were denied to own either NBC or CBS... Now, you know about the role of the Media in 2000 elections?

We cannot be too satisfied, my friends. We have a long way to go. Almost everyone of us is being watched. We cannot say or make any comment whithout suffering the consequences. Your bosses who control your life basically, can decide when to con
nect or disconnect you. This is called Total Dependency.

If you think that Katrina's result in Louisiana was an accident, think again. We will see the same reaction when there is a natural disaster. We'll be the last ones to be rescue.

A few decades ago, we talked about guns in the public schools. No one came to the rescue. I remember that Erasmus H.S. was like a jungle in the 80's. But it took Columbine to see there was a major problem with guns in school.

Now, for someone who really thinks that we are in 2005, segregation is over. I think that person needs serious help!

For all of us who live in the suburbs where the Public Schools are the top twenties in the US, we can see the major differences in the inner-cities. When I see that a lot of us spend their life and energy in a job where there is no prospect for promotion (you hit the glass ceiling); when I see that, in the inner cities, it takes the Police or First Aid about twenty minutes to respond; when I get slammed on my c
ar by the police for DWB (driving while black); when I see that someone got shot for getting his wallet out...my friend, we don't need a Ph.D. to understand what is going on.

It can happen to any of us. It is called: Discrimination or segregation.

For someone who does not know the meaning of DISCRIMINATION= Treating someone differently. Differentiate, Distance, Segregate (oops, based on Larousse)...